


Atlas Hands

by stormilys



Category: Aldnoah.Zero (Anime)
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/M, Role Reversal, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-15
Updated: 2015-11-15
Packaged: 2018-04-29 21:02:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,937
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5142353
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stormilys/pseuds/stormilys
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Her prince did not believe in peace, but she hears him say <i>I'm sorry</i> to an ausgespielt Areion and pushed strands of her hair behind her ear when she's angry.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Atlas Hands

On the commendation ceremony he was not the first to approach her after the many others.

The prince of Vers, fair-haired, light-eyed and slight for his age. At that time, he was barely her height at fifteen and she at fourteen, and she was convinced she could take him down in seconds on a fist fight if given a chance.

And it was not uncommon to see him there; Asseylum knows already what his intentions were before he even spoke.

"Be my right hand. Join me in my efforts to better the lives of our nation, our beloved Vers." The way he says it is so simple, the intentions that belied in the statement makes her doubt he could. "Let us fight for the glory of a better future."

"Would doing so require me to take the life of another?"

He frowns at her. "Perhaps."

"I must refuse." She could hear her own mind cursing her for refusing the prince. "I cannot end another's life. I mean to give no harm to anyone, be they Terran or Versian. This is the oath of my knighthood."

"Then I shall gamble their lives for mine, and offer you the world." The words take her aback, and then he gives her his hand, gloved and pristine white. His eyes convey he would not take no for an answer. "Would you give me your name, and fight beside me?"

Finally she kneels on one bent knee and takes the hand of her prince. She gives him her name and swears loyalty, and there is a crowd that witness how she swears unshakable fealty to this small, unassuming boy-prince, whose eyes are light and frosted shards of glass, who offers her the world, and covered his hands.

* * *

For an adolescent boy he is big words and sophistication, direct and devious, all in one.

His preferences are quite simple. Black tea, white handkerchiefs, blue coats (he reasons the red ones does not suit his eyes), red cushions. Books over a game of chess, silence over small talk. Commands are often and requests are seldom.

He calls for her presence more than his own manservant.

He sits on the viewing room floor with his legs crossed and his coat draped neatly over the back of the unused cushion.

"Tie your hair." His finger pads catch a lock of hair that spilled over her shoulder. "But don't clip it."

There is a satisfied appreciation in his eyes when she shows up to report, yellow hair pulled high at the back of her head amidst the storm-cloud gray of her uniform.

* * *

He trusts her when Sir Trillram is spouting mutiny and his blood is splattered against her pant leg, bleeding red like a bullet wound; the holes in his own uniform and through his skin. She's stopped chiding her lord not to continue his pursuit the moment he insulted her nation.

No one insulted her country; be they Terran or Versian blood.

As he throws the gun on Terra's seas, his gloves are pristine and Sir Trillram lay a lifeless corpse, servant stood by the side and awaited her master's orders.

"Traitors. Once a betrayer, always a betrayer." He spats, overstepping the body. He is trembling with fury and bitter betrayal as much as a fifteen year old body could handle. "You—"

"—Have seen nothing. Have heard nothing." She proclaims. "What I have decreed the day I swore my fealty to you, Prince Slaine, is whole and true. And should you die for the future of Vers, I see fit to follow."

The prince holds her hand and lays a kiss on her knuckles.

"Throw away those trousers. I won't have you infected with that traitor's treachery with his blood on your skin."

"Understood."

* * *

The world Slaine gives her at her sixteenth birthday is a beautifully crafted mech, gleaming ocher with extraordinary trajectory and security breach index. He smiles at her grin, but he whispers a secret when he's close, warmth on her ear that almost startled her with apprehension.

"I have given you the world," he murmurs by her ear. "I'm counting on you to give me mine."

She swears her loyalty, again, and will do so even in death, for as many as he would want.

* * *

She opposes her lord over a lot of things—especially if he involved himself in business that should be hers and hers alone. Things that are personal; that did not have to involve him, when she indulges herself on her days-off.

Notwithstanding as her prince and his ambitions came first, her calling as a girl was still what she considered the most important, if not second only to her prince.

He expresses a dislike over her dresses; "too short", "too brassy", "too gaudy". He calls her accessory choices flashy and redundant.

He thinks she looks better in white. He also criticized how she would sit, how she would walk, how she would stand.

It is eight parts complacency and two parts guilt when he gives her the silent treatment of his irritation at her insubordination when she wore the high-heeled boots Countess Femianne has given her over the leather ones she usually used, purposely avoiding her eyes and _her_ and not speaking when they are lumped together, anyway, for she was still his aide, and he, her master.

Asseylum wears them for the next three days, just to spite, for his meddling.

At the fourth day, he gives her an annoyed purse of his lips before he pushes the teacup to her as a peace offering after he summoned her while she bows her apology with an amused grin.

* * *

It is strange when he asks her to comb his hair.

It is stranger to see a scar on his unblemished face. Hidden among the tufts of his fair locks.

There are more prominent ones on his bare hands she does not notice before. His wrists. She knows the bite and the blemish of metal and rust on skin when she sees it.

"He had me whipped, beaten and starved when I was a child. Kept me in the dungeon until I agreed to acknowledge him as my father." He smiles humorlessly at her stare. "Some Emperor he is, no? Threatened by a mere child's empty threats. What can a nine year-old kid do against a criminal like him but spout idiocy and bitter tears?"

"It is not idiocy, my Prince." She stares right on as his eyes flicker to her.

"Care to elaborate?"

"To be able to withstand such a treatment. The defiance against the man who could have very well taken everything else form you yet still doing so." She brushes away the hair that covered his scar, a finger trailing the raised skin. "It is not idiocy. It is purpose. It is change. Your Highness, it is hope. And, perhaps...it is also a promise, tinged with threat. Maybe...back then it would have been empty, but that is not the case now, is it?"

Slaine is smiling, really smiling now, the ice and the grim look to his eyes fading. She returns it with a knowing smirk.

"Your scars are proof of his cowardice. Why not make him pay for them?" He laughs, grabs and kisses her fingers until his touch warms her cheeks.

"I knew there was a reason why I chose you."

"Prince, you honor me."

* * *

He pulls her up as easy as he would swing a rag doll from her place on the rubber mats that cushioned her.

The world spins round and round, spiraling, the proof of her consciousness being her breathlessness and the ache in her lungs after he swings her down to submission. But her defeat made her proud; she thought wrong, and her lord was strong.

* * *

He rubs naked fingers and silence on her wrists and hands and would not stop asking her what she wanted, if she felt fine, or would she prefer tea or milk. It is her third day in this ward; he is her only visitor. His visits are meant to comfort her, but every time he presses his trembling lips onto her bruised knuckles and swears over and over that he would be the one to protect her this time. It takes endless hours of incessant questioning, of plumping her pillows and fussing over her until he settles by her side, silent and aghast.

"...Slaine."

He doesn't seem to fully understand what her role really means.

Asseylum thumbs away what ran from his eyes and down his cheeks, and he leans into that hand and stares uncertainly at her and she smiles.

"I'm going to be okay."

Just like she would affirm her loyalty for a thousand times over, she would protect him and would fight for him, a million times over, for whatever reason and for whatever cause. 

* * *

Her prince did not believe in peace.

He believed that peace was superficial, meant to fool humanity and blind them to ignorance. Was there peace while a ball is held? The ball is held in the first place because chaos came first. Whatever loot the victorious had claimed would be spent to wasteful proportions; hosting lavish parties, pleasure women, liqueur and illegal armaments.

He cared not for Terra nor its inhabitants for they played no part in this; the only time they got in his way was when they fired at him during the peak of war while in pursuit of Trillram.

They loiter by the balcony and he's already discarded three broken glasses of champagne and she's prepared because there are bandages on his fingers.

"Peace is only possible when there is no one else to fight." He told her as his eyes blaze, set upon the man who stood among the Version nobility. "That's why wars happen. And this war is happening because there is someone we must fight."

"The Emperor—?"

"Do not soil your tongue with that name."

She's amused and she does not bother to hide it. He stares at her, paragon eyes that get under her skin, and twists a lock of her hair with bandaged fingers.

"You've let them down tonight."

"I did." She's buzzing inside as she grins delightedly.

"It's gotten long." It's gotten past her hips in two years while he is a full head taller than her and his shoulders are broader. "Now you really won't be able to clip them."

"Some insouciance you have over hair clips." She retorts. His mouth curves kindly, and he wordlessly takes her hand when a new melody trilled out into their private space. "My Lord, it's proper manners to ask a lady if she wants to dance."

"But you are already dancing with me, anyway."

In the phantom crowd that watch them she gets the feeling that he is showing her off and he was proud of it; the powerful swing of his arm and confidence radiating from his strides when he spins her, catching her and pulling her close, closer. Twice she felt his fingers in her hair.

* * *

Sometimes his eyes would linger.

She knows because he would not stop looking at her face, at her mouth, after he corners her against the beaten mats underneath her back. Her arm is twisted firmly behind her, and her cheeks burn at the catch of his breath when her chest carelessly brushes his. She thinks she might have let out such a sound herself; there was her opening (a meager excuse, she knows).

He is the one left cringing at the floor this time, and she huffs away with too warm cheeks and walks with her confidence deteriorating.

Those eyes are following her, and the heat in his gaze astounds her in frightened curiosity.

* * *

At his angriest he is anger itself; raw, red, and ruthless. He would stop for nothing nor for anyone; if one is unlucky enough to cross his path, miracles can only be relied on for so much until they become the impossible. 

She patterned these times and knew where he would go, what he would be doing, when he would return and how he would like his documents, his tea or any other thing that is relevant to his activities. This time, she has his tea-spilled intel redone and encased in red, a cup of warm milk with honey sitting on his desk with a saucer and a teaspoon laid with one extra sugar cube, behind his empty seat she waits in silence until the door slides and his near-silent footsteps echo.

His shoulders are tense when she draws away his coat; he collapses heavily with the weight of the world in his shoulders as his hand darts towards the cup of honeyed milk.

Coat folded in her arms, she asks, "Should I leave, Your Highness?"

Silently, he gestures for her to come closer and the coat drops when he seizes her by the waist with both arms, rough and somehow a touch desperate. His mouth brushes against her stomach in a passing warmth, and closely, she cradles his head.

"You're mine, isn't that right?"

"I made an oath in my knighthood. I made an oath before I served you, My Lord. Indeed, I am yours."

"Then that's that."

Later, she learns, that a Count dared to challenge him for the right of her servitude—she had gained the interest of nobles, seeking her and wanting her for the power and the respect she had amassed simply by being the prince's right hand. The nameless Count was defeated in the vacuum of space, and no one else dared step forward.

* * *

Blue is his signature.

The rocks in the earrings he secures on her ears are polished moonstones encased in silver. They reflect his eyes and the gold of her hair that he brushes over her right shoulder. When he meets her eyes through the mirror of his scarcely used vanity, she raises a hand and idly fingers her newest accessory as his arms cage her against the vanity's edges.

"They suit you."

"You're confident they wouldn't get in the way?"

"I figured, so there is a reason why they seem simple and small as they look."

"They're beautiful."

"Happy birthday."

She turns around, say, catches the slightest uncertainty in his gaze before he tries to draw away his arms until she brushes her lips against the corner of his mouth. It is with difficulty when he tries not to pull her in. She could see it in his eyes before she whispers her thanks and slips away from him.

* * *

Traditionally, Versian nobility propose with moonstone rings.

* * *

He steals a kiss while her hands are covered with grease, under aircraft steel and bevel shadows.

His mouth is soft and pliant and somewhere along the way he tries to be gentle but it comes rough at the edges yet she knows it's what she wants when he presses her to open her mouth. She smears oil on his sleeves and neck when she moves to grasp his neck and they stay there, perhaps, for hours on end.

And when it's over, Asseylum shares his flushed cheeks and thumbs a path from his eyelashes to his collarbones while she still can.

Tomorrow, the skies that Terra and Vers fought for would bleed purple.

* * *

The revolution paints the red planet blue; to overthrow the corrupted ideals and the usurper who took the life of his father, his mother, his brothers in arms and took the throne from the true heir, Prince Slaine Vers Troyard; to reject the idea that the existence of Aldnoah, that made his blood noble and prince, was the very center that fueled everything Vers was made to be as it is.

To take back their beautiful nation and restore it from its former glory and majesty.

And the revolution halts the Terran-Versian war to confusion; questions why Prince Slaine would turn on his own father ran rampant among the Terran forces.

> _"This man—no, this monster is not my father! He is the murderer of 11 years ago, the criminal that brought dishonor to my family! Who took Vers and turned our nation against Terra, lavishing both their beauty and resources! And now, my brothers and sisters and people of Terra, I, Slaine Vers Troyard, as the last surviving member of my clan, hereby declare a rebellion, and hear me, for this I promise: I will rightfully take back Vers from the clutches of this monster! Let us fight together, join me in my efforts to better the lives of our nations. Let us fight for the glory of a better future! For Earth and for Vers!"_

Her prince has conspired with 24 out of 37 Clans; whatever rebellion against his cause was quickly crushed. He has swayed the common folk and nobility to his side, and he rose against the murderer of his family name and brought justice after it brewed for years.

They crown him His Imperial Majesty Slaine Vers Troyard, weeks after.

* * *

On the coronation ceremony it is her he first approaches.

The Emperor of Vers, fair-haired, stormy-eyed and puissant as his age. This time, her head barely brushed his chin at nineteen and he at 20 and after he'd brought her down to submission twice.

The crowd parts for him and beheld them in awe while his intentions are unclear to her.

And the words they exchange are much like their first, except, he asks _—_ not commands _—_ if she would like to be the next woman befitting of the Troyard name.

He asks her to marry him, be his wife. His right hand, by his side, for eternity.

She says yes.


End file.
